The Philippines

More than 400 people were in attendance last week at the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library of New York University in Manhattan to hear an address by Philippine President Corazon Aquino under the auspices of Distinguished Speakers Program and to ask her questions afterward. Excerpts from Aquino's remarks on the role the press played in the Philippine revolution:

Thank you, the media, for the invaluable role you played and continue to play in the transformation of my country. That role was invaluable, for it was truth that set us free.

The images and events during the elections and the revolution are deeply etched in the memory of our people and give inspiration to the other nations of the world: men and women linked arm to arm guarding the ballot boxes; computer technicians hired by the government to do the official count walking out of the fraudulent tabulation; tens of thousands of men and women, with their children about them, in vigil, half in fear, half in joy, guarding with their bodies the small detachment of rebel soldiers; nuns kneeling in the path of oncoming tanks; a nation rising to a new dignity. These images, and more, chronicled for all the world the courage and pride of a people, their deep faith in the rightness of their cause, the protection of God and the ultimate triumph of democracy.

And so you, the foreign media, have been the companion of my people in its long and painful journey to freedom.

But even as I briefly recount these momentous events, one should recognize an underlying reality that they reveal. The reality that you, more than others, should recognize: the liberating virtue of truth and the power of the media to make it happen.

It is a power, it seems, that feeds man's hunger for truth. A hunger that accepts no substitutes, neither promises of material progress nor safe and comforting lies, and will overcome the most intricate and comprehensive web of censorship. Although the Marcos regime effectively controlled the Philippine media, there was never a period when some kind of "alternative press" did not attempt to report the facts and challenge the misinformation published by the government. In the later stages of the regime, such alternative press took the form of small newspapers that operated from day to day under the constant threat of closure or arrest or paramilitary terrorism. But throughout the whole Marcos regime, there was always what may be described as the "Xerox media" and the "Betamax media." News items and opinion columns in U.S. newspapers and magazines were widely photocopied, and U.S. national newscasts were lifted in videocassettes, smuggled into the Philippines and reproduced over and over again by innumerable and spontaneous networks of Filipinos hungering for the truth.

The rebirth of Philippine democracy is undoubtedly the showcase of media power, but, less obviously, it is also a demonstration of its limits.

Fourteen years of lies in the controlled Philippine press, once the most respected institution in the old Republic, did not dull the appetite for truth - or save the dictatorship from it. Marcos had the media and the guns, we had the truth . . . The media are effective as the instruments of truth, from which they draw their real power. The media do not make or unmake governments; tanks do that, and, more rarely but surely, people do. And, even armed with the truth, the media's power is frail. Without the people's support, it can be shut off with the ease of turning a light switch. An official threat to your advertisers, a grip on your paper supply or a squad of soldiers at your doorstep, and your last issue becomes your paper's valedictory.

These things are inconceivable here because the enemies of democracy believe that the people won't allow them to happen. But study what happened in the small version of your democracy and media that was my country on Sept. 21, 1972 (when Marcos declared martial law). The people did not protest the shutdown of the media, and there was nothing the media could do about it. But from the assassination of (my husband) Ninoy (in August 1983) onwards, the people demonstrated massively against any attempt by the government to shut down the alternative press and (the Roman Catholic station) Radio Veritas. The media did not restore democracy in the Philippines, the people did. They made the revolution and protected their media.

We have a long way to go, and it will be a hard climb uphill. I hope that just as you sympathized with us in our hard days of struggle, so you will support us now in our efforts to build a country to match our pride. As you channeled your power to undo a dictatorship, so may you channel it now to help create an enduring democracy. I ask that you use media's tremendous power to build up rather than to tear down, to create rather than to destroy.

I would ask you to report the truth about the Philippines within the full context. And the context, for the Philippines, is that of a developing nation ravaged by years of mismanagement and abuse by the Marcos regime, of a people struggling under difficult circumstances to arrive at the maturity and self- sufficiency of a sovereign nation. Of the truth, which made us free, we obviously have no fear.